Pathogens, Volume 4, Issue 4

Studies on fungal pathogens belonging to the ascomycota phylum are critical given the ubiquity and frequency with which these fungi cause infections in humans. Among these species, Aspergillus fumigatus causes invasive aspergillosis, a leading cause...

Staphylococcus aureus is an opportunistic pathogen often carried asymptomatically on the human body. Upon entry to the otherwise sterile environment of the cardiovascular system, S. aureus can lead to serious complications resulting in organ failure...

Habitually professional phagocytes, including macrophages, eradicate microbial invaders from the human body without overt signs of infection. Despite this, there exist select bacteria that are professional pathogens, causing significant morbidity and...

While studying respiratory infections of unknown etiology we detected Saffold virus in an oropharyngeal swab collected from a two-year-old female suffering from diarrhea and respiratory illness. The full viral genome recovered by deep sequencing show...

The Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most frequent pathogens that causes severe morbidity and mortality throughout the world. S. aureus can infect skin and soft tissues or become invasive leading to diseases such as pneumon...

Giardia duodenalis (syn. G. intestinalis, or G. lamblia) is a leading cause of waterborne diarrheal disease that infects hundreds of millions of people annually. Research on Giardia has greatly expanded within the last few years, and our understandi...

Salivary Histatin 5 (Hst 5) is an antimicrobial peptide that exhibits potent antifungal activity towards Candida albicans, the causative agent of oral candidiasis. However, it exhibits limited activity in vivo, largely due to inactivation by salivary...

The working model to describe the mechanisms used to replicate the cancer-associated virus Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is partly derived from comparisons with other members of the Herpes virus family. Many genes within the EBV genome are homologous acro...

The complement anaphylatoxin C5a contributes to host defense against Staphylococcus aureus. In this study, we investigated the functional role of the two known C5a receptors, C5aR1 and C5aR2, in the host response to S. aureus. We found that C5aR1^−/−...

Staphylococcus aureus are Gram-positive bacteria that are the leading cause of recurrent infections in humans that include pneumonia, bacteremia, osteomyelitis, arthritis, endocarditis, and toxic shock syndrome. The emergence of methicillin resistant...

The widespread occurrence of vaginal candidiasis and the development of resistance against anti-fungal agents has stimulated interest in understanding the pathogenesis of this disease. The aim of our work was to characterize, in an animal model of va...